Mr. Bell traced the rise and progress of the filibuster spirit, until it culminated in the Ostend manifesto, and became reflected in this Cuban bill. Both were in a form offensive to Spain. No nation would be apt to receive kindly an offer made to purchase its territory when accompanied by a studied reminder of its fallen fortunes. His (Mr. Bell's) opinion was that the Ostend manifesto and the present proposal were framed on the perfect knowledge that Cuba could not be acquired, and that they were addressed to what is supposed to be the dominant traits in our national character. The committee's report is skillfully drawn up. It promises to extend the trade and commerce of the North, the peculiar industry of the South, and the agriculture of the West. It is framed to habituate the country to the cry of "war," but we are making no preparation for war. On the contrary, we are trying to get along without a revenue. For himself, he would favor our acquiring control of the island, either as a protectorate or independent power; but he likewise held that the time has not yet come when its possession was necessary, either to our development or security. We are not now in position to accept Cuba, if Spain should offer it as a gift. We cannot accept it until we have built up a navy of sufficient strength to maintain it. The first blow that would be struck in a war with a naval power would be to wrest it from us, and hold its harbors as a means of annoyance against us. The committee's promise that the acquisition of the island will give us the monopoly of sugar is equally fallacious. The increasing production of that article would soon create its production throughout the whole temperate zone. Neither is it true, as the committee says, that when a nation ceases growth, its decadence commences. History does not teach this doctrine of expansion, nor is there any parallelism between the growth of a nation and an individual man. Are our internal affairs so perfectly organized as to leave no range for our ambition? Has even the question of currency been placed on a satisfactory basis? Is our great internal domain reduced to such narrow limits as to afford no scope to our energies? Our territory is now greater than the whole area of the Roman Empire. All this we are bound to protect and defend; and to defend the accessible points of our extended frontier would require 100,000 men, with at least 250 war steamers. The chairman of the Naval Committee says our whole guns are 1,100. The French navy alone has 15,000 cannon afloat, with 500 ships, of which half are war steamers. We are not now prepared for such a war; and yet the President announced, on a recent occasion, that our policy henceforth is expansion.